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The ‘beautiful blame’…

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by Anna Raccoon on April 24, 2012

The feministas and their supporters are having a field day today – a football field day. It is not enough for them that they have seen the conviction of a man for rape where the girl concerned was ‘too drunk’ to consent to sexual intercourse, and despite both men claiming that she had consented, the only other witness, the girl, was believed by the jury when she said that she hadn’t consented. She might have been too drunk to remember how she had got to the hotel, but she was not too drunk to remember that she hadn’t given consent to sexual intercourse.

I have no argument with the law which says that being incapable of giving consent does not imply that you have consented. I do not argue with the jury decision, they heard all the evidence, saw the body language, watched the exchanged glances in court, and made their decision as they were entitled to.

Had these events taken place in some far flung field, as they have in the past, I might have more sympathy with the ‘not too drunk to remember that you hadn’t given consent, but too drunk to call out for help’ – this was a hotel, which by its very nature, is full of people, people in the adjoining rooms, people in the reception area, people without the rutting instincts of a randy duck, who might have come to her assistance. Sky reporter Mike McCarthy originally tweeted that he had heard ‘screaming’ coming from the room – whether it was out of regard for his reputation as a gentleman who failed to respond to those ‘screams’ or whether he had been overcome by a fit of journalistic honesty, he later amended his tweet to read ‘squealing’; ‘squealing’ is hardly the best way to call for assistance.

It is the subsequent events which truly puzzle me. I am firmly of the ‘she asked for it’ brigade. It might help to define ‘it’ before you flame me to death. By ‘it’ I do not mean that she asked, or deserved to get raped. I do mean that she bears some responsibility for the events which subsequently got so out of hand that she ended up being raped.

I am well aware that the above statement is anathema to the feministas. In the same genre as Less Jasper’s ‘black people can’t be racist’ we have the theory that women can never ever be responsible in any way whatsoever, no, no, no, for any sexual activity unless they have handed over a signed and witnessed statement consenting to precisely the course of events to follow, including the number of sugars to be put in their post-coital tea.

We have no problem with the police handing out leaflets advising home owners to lock their doors, it doesn’t exonerate house burglary; we have no problem with advice not to leave keys in cars, it doesn’t exonerate car thieves. Let one person insinuate that dressing in your most alluring outfit, heading for a nightclub frequented by footballers and other randy young men, sinking several double measures of alcohol and then heading back to a hotel room late at night with said young men, might possibly lead them to believe that you were prepared to engage in the sort of activity that hotel rooms late at night tend to get put to – and the heavens will open over your head.

That is precisely the situation which occurred on Twitter over the week-end. Sheffield United supporters, with just two games left to play to reverse last years relegation, were upset at losing the match on Saturday. Would they have won if Ched Evans had been playing? Who knows, he might have been their champion scorer (sic) but if that made the game a foregone conclusion then we wouldn’t have football pools. Still, you can’t reasonably expect calm analysis from the average football fan – some may be highly intelligent and principled, but they weren’t the ones on Twitter. Ched Evans wasn’t playing, jailed by a jury who believed that he had raped a teenager. Scarcely surprising that, fuelled by the Tweets emanating from the courtroom all week, they gave vent to the bravado of testosterone. ‘She asked for it’, ‘she was a slag’, ‘Ched Evans’ is innocent, on and Twitteringly on it went.

I blame the feministas for the rash of convictions that will surely follow. They piled onto Twitter with a vengeance, demanding that the law be changed, no one should be allowed to say such terrible things about a hallowed woman. Inevitably, the girl was known locally, and before long someone had named her and was making allegations about other events of a similar nature that she had been involved in. It turned very ugly, despite frequent reminders that naming the victim was a criminal offence, and a warning from North Wales police that they would take action against those who had named her.

Now one of Ched Evans team mates has been suspended from the club following statements he made on Twitter (not of naming the victim). North Wales police are in the process of tracking down the identity of those who did name her and charges will surely follow.

Rape is wrong, undeniably so, so all due condemnation on Ched Evans head – however, I am not monumentally impressed by his team mate either; what sort of man is Clayton MacDonald that he metaphorically ‘passes the ball’ to his team mate and says, OK, you score now? What happens then – does he turn on the TV to pass the time and watch the late night sports news? What sort of girl enjoys spending time round mindless morons like this? Whoops, I’ve done it again…I’ve insinuated that she might share some responsibility for what occurred.

The tragedy of the week-end events on Twitter is that the feministas have engineered a climate in which no blame is permitted to attach to anyone but the owner of the penis which did not have consent. Ched Evans. His fault and his alone. His shoulders to bear all the blame. Those who have overstepped the mark in the fevered after match Twitter atmosphere on Saturday will also be criminalised. His fellow team mate has already been suspended (though not Ched interestingly). The team will suffer. The supporters will suffer. The game will suffer.

Because it is not enough for the feminstas that the owner of the penis should rightfully be jailed – they demand that every conversation within earshot should follow their agenda as to whether this nineteen years and eleven months old ‘teenager’ has responsibility for her safety. They won’t be prosecuted for their behaviour on Twitter on Saturday. The feministas want women to be seen as total victims, passive creatures, rather than those with the strength to stand up and see justice be done.

Give the double vodkas a miss girls, pull your skirt down and your top up, and when the next couple of randy footballers ask if you want to go back to their hotel room at 1am, curl your lip and say ‘you must be joking’. If they try to follow you out of the club, ask the doorman to call you a taxi home. That’s feminism.

There are times when I question that and times when I think it is a very good idea! Good to see La Raccoon back and blogging the un pc yet still beautifully thought through (and written) sense. The brutal fact is that nobody comes out of the tale well, whether it is a young woman who keeps the company of footballers (erm why, for their wit and panache?) when too drunk to say “no” or a footballer who would want to bonk a girl in that condition. Presumably in the company of his mate. That’s what I really call zonal marking! Woe to Moderne Englande!

Has anyone considered that this could be the only way that these young men can either have sex (only if the woman is too drunk to decline or notice) or can perform (only with a woman who is too drunk to complain that their performance is crap – short and (not too) sweet? Perhaps it’s something to do with footballers requiring to be quick in the box!

I have no particular objection to the school of thought which says it does no harm for people to be careful when out in pubs and clubs, and to take steps which might minimise their risk of being victims of crime. I might even stretch to noting that doing things which increase your risk of being a victim of crime are not very clever.

Similarly, you say people should share responsibility for what happens to them. To an extent, I agree, though not to the extent of making the perpetrators of crime somehow less guilty. Yes, you’re a berk if you leave your house unlocked, but that doesn’t make the burlglar any less of a burglar. Similarly, the victim in this case was unwise to get so inebriated that she had no control over what happened to her. That doesn’t make Ched Evans any less of a rapist.

However, there is a clear distinction to be drawn between that and what occurred on Twitter over the weekend. The “justiceforched” hashtag is currently mostly just repetitive and incoherent (ie: like most of Twitter), but over the weekend it was a pretty continuous deluge of people saying that Mr Evans was innocent and that the young woman was a “slut,” “slag,” “sket,” “whore,” “liar,”* “bitch,” “money grabber,” “tramp,” and so on. One particularly memorable Tweeter even hoped she would get raped again, only in a way that he considered to be a “proper” rape, so that she would learn the difference between his view of what constituted a rape and what had occurred in that hotel room, which he presumably considered to be just a bit of harmless fun.

Now, this is what provoked the ire of the “feministas.” I have to say, I don’t think you have to be a “feminista” to be offended by stuff like that. I think you just have to be something other than an utterly loathsome person. However, this being Twitter, the backlash against the verdict provoked a backlash of its own, which was in many ways just has unpleasant, with lots of hopeful comments about Evans himself being raped in prison, or even his supporters being raped too. Looking in on the hashtag was, to borrow a quote from Alan Moore, like watching an abbatoir full of retarded children.

And this is where the double standard comes in. You say that people should take responsibility for themselves, and to a degree that’s fair enough. However, you excuse the conduct of those on Twitter who were abusing the victim in the most loathsome manner (as well as naming her, obviously) on the basis that “you can’t reasonably expect calm analysis from the average football fan.” Instead, any consequences which will fall upon football, its fans and its followers as a result of this, you lay at the door of the “feministas.”

Well, to use an unpleasant but apropos analogy, it was the football fans that got drunk and foolish on the (false) belief that you can anonymously abuse people and break the law via Twitter. They have to bear their share of the responsibility if they end up getting raped.

Quite agree Philip, they must take their share of the blame – along with the feministas who were goading them.

The ‘calm analysis’ comment was made in respect of their belief that ‘if only‘ Ched had been playing they would have won, not to excuse their conduct on Twitter. I wasn’t trying to excuse their conduct on that basis, merely pointing out that they were obviously riled and perhaps might have been left alone to reflect that they still might not have won – rather than goaded over their ‘Ched is innocent’ comments – the later comments were inexcusable. The flames had been fanned by then.

I didn’t see the very start of the hashtag. I looked out of curiosity when one of my friends tweeted that it was “like peering directly into Satan’s arsehole” (he has a gift for a deeply unpleasant turn of phrase). Prior to that, I hadn’t even been aware of the trial, let alone any outrage it might have caused.

Now, that was Saturday, and although I wouldn’t like to swear to it, I think it was before Sheffield’s match against MK Dons had started. At that stage, it was mostly one-way traffic of the “whore/slut/sket” variety. The “you’re all vile rapist supporting c*nts” posts were there, but they were in the minority, and seemed to me to be responding to the slut/whore comments rather than the other way around.

I tracked back through it all to about Friday night time, and I have to say that was as far as I could bear to go. It was the kind of stuff which makes you wonder whether it might not just be better to wipe out the entire species and leave the planet to the cockroaches. Fortunately, I realised that was just the abyss gazing back, as it were, and watched an episode of Supernatural instead.

Now, although I simply didn’t have the stomach to follow it to its origin (which presumably was shortly after the verdict was announced on Friday afternoon) and it did seem to me that the attacks on the victim certainly got worse as time went on, it was not initiated by goading from feminists, but from people egging each other on. The “feminist” replies, if you can call them that, were mostly people objecting (often in some fairly unlovely terms) to the victim being abused. There was some goading from about Saturday onwards, but a lot of this had an swfc hashtag attached, so unless Sheffield Wednesday is unusual for a football team in having a large feminist following, I suspect that had more to do with standard-issue football tribalism than radical wimminism.

There were certainly quite a few comments about feminism later on, and a lot of tweets linking over and over to the same damn blog article about “Rape Culture” (which actually made so not-entirely-unreasonably points, I thought), but this was after the slut-whore-sket stuff was well underway.

Which, I suppose, is a rather longwinded way of saying that I don’t think these flames were fanned by feminists. I think they were fanned by the fans.

I don’t do Twitter (haiku for morons) so am completely un-otraged. However, I fail to understand how Clayton McDonald is acquitted but Ched Evans is guilty.

Did the, ahem, lady in question say it was alright for Clayton to shag here senseless but your mate can only watch? Seeing as she was already half cut when Mr McDonald took her to the hotel I can only assume some delayed reaction to the bottles of wkd she’d been drinking all night.

It’s fairly straightforward because the issue isn’t whether she consented. She didn’t have capacity to consent so whether she said “yes” or not is beside the point.

The question is whether either footballer had a belief in her consent (and her capacity to give consent) that was both honest and reasonable.

That was an argument which was a lot easier for McDonald to raise a reasonable doubt about than Evans because McDonald was approached by the girl and was the one person she went back to the hotel room with. He did have the added hurdle of being in more prolonged contact with the girl, which perhaps made him in a better position to judge her level of intoxication, but perhaps that was outweighed in the jury’s mind by the fact that she made the initial approach and agreed to go back to his room.

Evans’ position is rather different, in that he came along later on, had a couple of mates make a surreptitious and deeply creepy recording of the incident outside, lied to hotel staff to gain access to the room and snuck out through the fire escape afterwards (whilst McDonald left by taxi and spoke to the receptionist on his way out to let them know the girl was still in the room).

Neither man is someone I would want within 100 yards of any daughter of mine, but I think McDonald was in a stronger position to argue “honest and reasonable belief” than a guy who snuck in (possibly) uninvited and had sex with the first semi-conscious girl he found.

I’m a feminist, y’know, read my Dworkin and Rich and Spender et al. back in the day and I agree with you Anna. I am sickened by the permanent victim status demanded for women by women claiming to be feminists. It reminds me of Lee Jasper and Diane Abbott.

Er, slightly OT but….. in my younger days I was mighty keen on the lasses. Nonetheless, even at my most youthful and hormonal, even after several glasses of ale, even if the young lady was very pretty indeed, I never ever wanted to “follow someone directly” if you see what I mean.

Rape is wrong, force is wrong and coercing a girl who is drunk into unwanted sex is wrong.

What I find suprising is the actions of both alleged victim and accused. Neither seem to fit their roles in the events.

The girl, going to a hotel room with a couple of footballers, drunk, at 1am. For a girl of her age and lifestyle/experience, i am surprised the expectation to have sex with the footballer/s was not clear. It would be interesting to see the CCTV footage for the club & hotel. I will never know was she being dragged & supsequently attacked or was she just drunk and sobered up or found out everyone knew what she had been doing with the footballers?

The actions of the footballers conforms exactly to type for footballer team sex antics stories. This is what they do every weekend, all over the world. They go out and find women who are willing to have sex with them often involving multiple footballers.

There actions do not form the usual MO of a rape attack. Texting your friends and getting them to come down to the hotel to film the event on their mobile phones of you engaging in a sex attack is unlikely.

I also wonder if the footballers ever considered what they were doing was rape, abuse or an attack. They obviously have no respect for these girls but does that make them any worse than all young men out on a saturday night trying to get laid.

She went back to the hotel with *one* footballer. CCTV footage from hotel showed her as being highly intoxicated but I’ve seen no reference to physical coercion. Hotel receptionist also described her as very drunk.

Second footballer turned up later on (possibly uninvited, not sure). Had not met girl prior to him entering hotel room. He lied to hotel staff to gain access to room. He says that first footballer was having sex with girl as he walked in and he was invited to have seconds. Don’t know what first first footballer’s testimony on this point was.

I think that the two guys filming it had arrived with second footballer. Don’t know if filming was being done with first footballer’s consent or not. Seems likely it was *not* being done with the girl’s consent.

At some point, second footballer also has sex with girl, then leaves through fire escape.

Girl wakes up alone in hotel room next morning with no idea what happened. To the best of my knowledge, she never claimed to have refused consent, as she couldn’t remember anything that occurred. She never directly made an allegation against either footballer, who were presumably identified from hotel records and CCTV (a point which I feel is rather harmful to the “she did it for the compo” claims being made by Mr Evans’ supporters.

First footballer was acquitted. I suspect that this was not because the girl consented, nor because she was deemed to have capacity to consent, but because the first footballer’s honest belief in her consent was deemed reasonable (or, at least, there was a reasonable doubt about whether it was *un*reasonable).

Second footballer convicted. Can’t say certainly as to what the jury’s precise reasoning was though logical inference is that she didn’t have capacity to consent and she either didn’t consent at all or he didn’t reasonable and honestly believe that her consent was valid.

He probably didn’t help his case by acting kind of rapisty throughout the entire incident, and then bragging in interview about how he could have had “any girl in the club” (a claim which is difficult to reconcile with the fact that he actually ended up with sloppy seconds on a semi-conscious teenager).

I’m not comfortable with this case.On other (not as well written) blogs it is claimed she has made three previous rape claims? Can anyone confirm that? I will be reading the Sunday papers avidly this weekend to see if she is so distraught that she has “sell sorry TELL her side of the story to protect all the women out there”.

Better still if they are going to have sex, call the police and breathalise the girl and note book the BA reading, then get them to check she is not under the influence of other illegal susbtances. After this they should call the girls parents to get them to speak to her to confirm she is consenting and the nature of what acts she is actually consenting to. After this maybe they could ring Harriet Harman to check she has not other issues with the act taking place. Of course it should all be videoed by the authorities as potential evidence in case there are any allegations of criminal acts later

Sorry Pompey Cowboy, I can see where the drunk part comes in but where was the ‘disorderly’ conduct? She didn’t jump on the bar, singing “I Will Survive” and wave her knickers in the air. She didn’t assault anyone. She didn’t swear or make a nuisance of herself. I would suggest her state of drunkenness was taken into account during the trial but that doesn’t excuse the actions of the ‘sports’ icons worshipped by our children. In fact, if the first footballer just lay back and made no attempt to prevent his mate from raping the girl, he is lucky he was not charged with that. I think Mr Evans will now have plenty of time to contemplate the non-consensual abuse of a body – especially in the prison showers. I hope that if he drops the soap, he kicks it all the way back to his cell before he bends down to pick it up!

I just think both were at fault. One person is seemed to have been treated as a total victim and the other takes the full wrap for it. Justice doesnt sit too well in this case, hence some of the remarks on twitter etc. It will been interesting to see what the Appeal court makes of the case. In the mean time darling of the left Julain Assange who faces in many ways similar allegations ie non consenual sex just sticks two fingers up to the system using all the protections of the legal system to frustrate justice. The legal systems has its likes and dislikes

I know I’m repeating myself but, sorry, we must agree to differ. According to the summing up, it was mentioned that the ‘lady’s’ lack of sobriety didn’t help matters but that does not justify the actions of someone who claims he could have any women because he is able to kick a football around a field for 90 minutes to take advantage of, by then, a more or less comatose female. The fact she had just had (consensual) sex with a friend of his does not justify his actions. I will admit that any woman who accompanies a man she has only just met (famous or not) to his hotel room at 1am is not going there to admire the paintings on his wall or where he keeps his socks. However, that part was consensual. The sex she had with the first footballer was consensual. The sex she had with the second man was not consensual. That is the reason why one was not guilty of rape and the other was.